


Imitation Game

by CarrieL



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-11 10:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19108003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrieL/pseuds/CarrieL
Summary: Not long after The Killing Game, as an episode tail on Unforgettable, Janeway sees something she shouldn't. J/C AU





	Imitation Game

If it hadn’t been for the Hirogen, she never would have known. If a species of hunters hadn’t ripped apart the holodecks down to their component electrons and nearly murdered the entire crew, they might have arrived on Earth without Janeway ever realizing that Chakotay had programmed the holodeck in a way that would get him court martialed if she turned him in. Instead, she’d spent every waking minute for the last ten days trying to turn the ship back into a functioning mode of transport and life support capsule. One of the last remaining tasks was to restore normal holodeck functions, which required rebooting prior programming. The crew was so stretched and exhausted that the job fell to Janeway.

Most programs were instantly recognizable and she just as quickly processed them into the rebuilt system for public or personal availability according to their settings. Sandrine’s. Neelix’s luau. B’Elanna’s Klingon simulations. A few were sweetly personal - Harry’s evening at home with his parents, for example. Janeway tried only to identify that a program was working rather than pry into the crew’s private imaginings. Working late on the strength of caffeine and little else, she activated a program Chakotay referred to with the code name Alpha before realizing that it was labeled Strictly Private, something her eyes never should have encountered.

Her fingers were on the panel to end the program when a sense of deja vu struck her. She’d been in this scene before. Could the program be labeled wrong, she wondered? She looked back and forth from panel to program, and before she could take further action she recognized the shore of Lake George from her own sailing program. She would have shared the program willingly if Chakotay had asked to use it, but it bothered her that he would access her private program and use it without asking. They had so little privacy aboard Voyager and she'd shared this shred of hers with him in a show of gratitude and concern after a near-death experience. As she contemplated how to handle this unusual and provoking situation, she unintentionally allowed the program to run another minute. To her astonishment, as she stared down the shoreline, she saw herself enter the scene as the sun grew low in the sky and walk up the beach barefoot - relaxed, completely at her leisure in a way she never was aboard Voyager - wearing a dress she hadn’t worn since New Earth. Janeway gasped.

Borrowing a private holo-program was one thing, but it was strictly against regulations to program a holo-character of another sentient being without that being’s express permission. She was witnessing a crime.

The correct course of action was clear. She should shut down the offending program, record the incident in the captain’s log, and summon Chakotay for discipline. She should definitely do that. But her feet were already following holo-Janeway stealthily up the beach, eager to see what she'd do in this prologue to the holoprogram. Eventually holo-Janeway sat, legs stretched in front, propped on her arms, and looked over the water as if she hadn't a care in the world. No further action seemed to be pre-programmed. It occurred to Janeway that holo-Janeway was waiting for someone to enter the scenario and interact with her - Chakotay, no doubt. Without any idea what to say or expect, Janeway approached.

"Hello," she greeted her hologram, wondering if it would recognize her.

Holo-Janeway looked up with no show of familiarity. "Hello," she said politely. "Are you one of the summer residents?"

"Yes," Janeway said. "I have a cabin about a kilometer from here. Are you waiting for someone?

Holo-Janeway smiled with a look of faraway contentment. "My husband will be home soon," she said. "We haven't seen each other in several weeks."

Janeway stumbled for words. "Oh," she said dully. "Enjoy." Her husband? Was that what Chakotay had made himself? How far did he carry this little charade of marital bliss? She had an ugly feeling she didn't want to know, but she'd gone too far to turn back on her discovery. She left holo-Janeway and retreated into the trees, working through her options. A sudden inspiration struck.

“Computer,” she said. “Is playback available of the most recent run of this program?”

“Yes,” the computer answered. “Begin playback?”

“Begin playback,” Janeway ordered.

#

When the playback was complete - every devastating minute of it - she knew that she wasn’t going to turn in Chakotay, for several reasons. The first was that the evidence, the program, was so personally mortifying that she’d rather delete it and forget she'd ever seen it than bring it before the admiralty. The second was that turning this into a disciplinary matter would require confronting Chakotay about it now. She ran that scenario in her head a few times as she stalked Holodeck 2, a scene from the program frozen beside her. “Chakotay, what were you thinking? How dare you? Why was this necessary?” Every interaction ended with him telling her things she didn’t want to hear about the person she’d become through four death-defying years in the Delta quadrant, and her having to answer to his accurate critique.

There was a third reason. It began to take the upper hand as Janeway acknowledged the legitimacy of the first two reasons and saw the options opened by keeping her knowledge of the program secret. According to the log, Chakotay had last used the program less than a month ago. Before that, several weeks. He’d be back, probably soon. He seemed … what was the word? He seemed reliant on the program. The thought gave her a moment’s pause, the pathos of it. But that was his fault, wasn’t it? He never should have created such a thing in the first place. When he showed up, she planned to be there. Ready.

#

It was simple to remove holo-Janeway and set an alarm for the next time Chakotay queued the program. Janeway was reviewing the official and bizarre report on visits to Voyager by an elusive alien named Kellin when Chakotay reserved holodeck time and set his Strictly Private Alpha program to be ready when he arrived. Janeway changed her clothes and raced to Holodeck 2 to wait for him in the same blue dress the character had worn, hair loosened onto her shoulders, plummy lipstick rubbed off. It was her dress, not something invented for the scenario. In spite of her pique over the program, it touched her that he wanted her as she was. After reviewing the playback she’d paused the simulation to examine holo-Janeway carefully and study the source file for the hologram. The hologram turned out to be as exact a replica of herself as Janeway could have created. She'd half expected a taller woman with larger breasts, a smaller waist, little alterations that would show where he found her wanting, but the hologram's body wasn’t enhanced in any way. She wore no makeup, and her hair was more casually styled than Janeway's usual coif. If anything she looked like a more relaxed Janeway - the vacation version of herself, if she ever took vacations. A happy woman, waiting on the man she loved. The thought tightened a growing knot in Janeway's stomach as she waited. 

It was predictable, she thought, that he’d come to the holo-scenario after Kellin left. Janeway had paper notes about that incident, tucked into her pocket to review when she became unsure of her own quickly fading memory. It occurred to her that once Voyager had distanced itself from the Ramurans, she might be able to revise the ship’s log to add references to Kellin that had disappeared due to the Ramurans' technology. It was worth a shot. For her, the visit from the mysterious woman was only that - mysterious, nothing personally disturbing. Chakotay had been much more affected, she could tell, but she didn’t know why.

When the doors of the holodeck swished open and Chakotay entered, he was wearing casual clothes too. He gave no sign of surprise that the program was already running when he entered. It was apparently his usual pattern to have holo-Janeway activated and waiting. Just beyond the beach was a cabin on the tree-lined lake, a little too similar to the family retreat on Lake George that they’d once sailed by in her Janeway summer retreat program, but nothing really objectionable. He'd changed a few details, colors and elevations, improved the placement of a window to show the sunset better, but the setting wasn’t what had made her come tonight. Setting didn’t get anyone court martialed, no matter how blatantly stolen or seedy.

Chakotay stood on the lakeshore for a few minutes, just around the bend from where he must expect holo-Janeway to be waiting, breathing in the breeze off the water, watching loons swim and call, then knelt to run sand through his fingers. When he came around the bend, Janeway allowed him to see her climb the steps to the cabin. It was easy to watch him in one location then be waiting in another - the holodeck wasn’t physically large. It simply reconfigured itself to give the illusion of space. She could watch him on one side of the lake and easily arrange herself on the sofa in the cabin, smiling at his appearance in the doorway a few minutes later. 

He held out his arms to her and she went to him willingly, as holo-Janeway had in the replay, but this time there was no warm greeting and soft kiss. This time he only held her, his heart thumping fast. Something was wrong. This wasn’t the way he’d greeted her before. Did he know somehow that she wasn’t the hologram?

“What is it, Chakotay?” she asked nervously, cheek against his chest. 

He waited several seconds before whispering, “I’m so sorry, Kathryn.”

The answer didn't put her at ease, but she was a master bluffer. Maybe she could still bluff her way out of this. She smoothed his hair and pulled back enough to pat his cheek.

“What are you sorry for, my love?” she asked, speaking to him in the same gentle tones holo-Janeway had.

He couldn’t meet her eyes. “There was a woman aboard - she’s gone now. She’d been here before, she said. I didn’t remember her but she says her race emits a pheromone that makes people forget them. It must be true. I can’t even picture her face now.” Janeway's shoulders relaxed. He didn't suspect her. He was upset about Kellin. She was going to get away with her subterfuge.

“What’s the part you’re sorry about?” she asked softly. She wanted very much to hear what had happened privately between Chakotay and Kellin. It had obviously moved him deeply. She'd hoped he’d share it as a friend, but he hadn’t, it wasn’t ship’s business, and in the end she had no right to ask. What was she to him? His captain. A better or worse friend, depending on the day. A woman who’d rejected him to uphold the parameters and protocols of a federation still fifty-odd thousand light years away. Why would he tell her anything personal? Why would he believe that she cared? What indication had she given him - lately anyway - that he held a special place in her heart?

But with his arms wrapped loosely around the woman he imagined to be holo-Kathryn, the woman he could share his innermost feelings with, he sighed and said, “She said we’d fallen in love, that she was in love with me. At first I didn’t believe it, but she told me things we’d done, confidences we’d shared. I think - I think I fell in love with her. Then her people came for her and by the time I saw her again, she’d forgotten me. I feel - ”

He twisted away from her and walked out onto the deck overlooking the lake, hunched and brooding. She joined him and rested her hand on his where it grasped the rail so tightly his knuckles were white.

“I feel like I betrayed you - us - but there is no us. I don’t know if there ever will be. I feel like a man who can only fall in love with a ghost.”

“I see.” She wanted to ask many questions - Did falling in love with Kellin mean that he'd given up on her, Kathryn? Was this visit to the program meant as a goodbye? Did he still love her? Was he angry about the choices she'd made or did he accept them as necessary? - but suddenly being in the scenario as he unburdened himself felt like reading his personal log. She shouldn’t be here, but there was no way to excuse herself without giving away what she'd done, what she knew. He glanced at her as if expecting her to say something.

“I’m no ghost, Chakotay,” she said in a voice she hoped was reassuring enough to bring him out of his mood and back to the loving camaraderie he'd shared with holo-Janeway. Then after a time she might find an excuse to slip out of his sight, replace herself with the hologram, and quietly leave the holodeck to brood herself on their little tragedy.

“No,” he said and faced her. With a piercing look he put his hand on her cheek. “No, you’re no ghost.”

His arms stole around her and pulled her in for a far more passionate kiss than anything she’d seen in the playback. Janeway was so surprised that she forgot to pull away. She should have put aside her prudery and watched more, she thought as his tongue probed her lips and in her astonishment she opened her mouth wide for him. Maybe other playbacks had been more … physical. All she’d seen were a few gentle kisses and caresses, the easy intimacy of a well established couple. That's what he'd wanted from her and she'd refused to give him, for reasons that seemed stupider by the moment. She needed to lead him back in the direction of the warm friendship she'd witnessed, but the kiss was driving all rational thought from her mind.

“My,” she whispered when his lips slid from hers to explore her neck. “You’re very … ardent for a man who was in love with another woman a few hours ago.”

“It was transference,” he said in a stubborn tone. “Because I can’t have you. I’ve been so lonely, Kathryn. You know that. It’s why I come here.” His mouth had found her collarbone and begun to push the dress off her shoulder. She should stop him, but all she could think of was how good the last fingers of sunlight felt on the soft skin he was exposing, and how delicious it would be for the dress to fall further. “You’re the only one I want,” he whispered as his fingers trailed her neckline, raising goosebumps.

The wild, desperate thought that ran through her mind was, What could it hurt? He thought she was a hologram. His disturbing willingness to make love to her hologram aside, a game like this was the only way she could have an intimate relationship with him. She was deceiving him and breaking rules, but he’d started it, damnit. He’d sought this. What harm could it do, to him anyway, if she played along? It would give them both a release they badly needed. Or so ran the rationalization as she opened his jacket and ran her hands across the chest she’d longed to explore.

Her response lit him on fire. He pulled down the dress to expose her left breast, took it in his mouth, and groaned in answer to her toe-curling moan. When she put her hands to the fastening of his trousers he grabbed her ass and yanked her against him, fully erect, then brought his mouth back to hers as he hitched her up onto the wide deck rail and pushed the dress above her knees.

“Do you want this, Kathryn?” he asked as he nipped at her earlobe and rubbed his palms the length of her thighs. In answer she stretched her legs wider to let him stand between her knees, opened his trousers, and pushed down his briefs to expose him.

“I want it,” she said, sliding her hands up under his shirt as she stretched to kiss the soft flesh under his jaw.

He paused with his hands on her inner thighs, thumbs skimming the fabric of her panties. “I love you,” he said with sudden quiet seriousness, withdrawing his head from her lips to study her eyes. She couldn’t bear their intensity and shut hers.

“I love you too,” she said, clearly and without hesitation. It was true, even if she could never let him know that she and not the hologram had said it. With that assurance, he hooked his fingers into her panties, let her rise to release them, and pushed them quickly to the deck. As he lifted the dress to her waist, focused on what he was revealing, Janeway looked around her at the cabin and lake she’d known all her life, struck by a wave of surreality. None of this could be real. She was in a strange Delta Quadrant dream and would awaken in Sickbay with Chakotay beside her, eager to hear her voice calling him Commander, everything as it always had been.

That thought ceased when his tongue touched her. He’d knelt and settled her knees on his shoulders, the better to lap at her, spread wide to the open air, breasts bare above the dress now bunched around her middle in a position she'd certainly never before assumed at the family cabin. She cried out louder than she’d heard her own voice in many months, the sound echoing across the water, echoed by night birds, calling his name. She leaned back, gripping the rail, to feel the sunset warm on her bare chest and smell pine in the breeze from the water, lifted up and at one with the lake in her ecstasy. Only when she’d screamed and choked out his name several more times in the process of rising to a splintering orgasm did he stand, clutch her against him, and penetrate her with a long cry of his own that resonated all through her trembling body as it carried across the water.

In several thrusts it was over. He kept an arm around her and braced himself with a hand as he slumped against her shoulder.

“Spirits, Kathryn,” he said. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she said, stroking his back and kissing his head as she shrugged back into the dress, shocked at what she'd just allowed herself to do and suddenly completely alert. This was no dream. She'd done it all right - _it_ was sticky between her thighs and she needed to bring back the hologram and get out before he realized the truth.

“I’d better go in and clean up," she said.

With effort, he took a step back, unable to take his eyes off her. One hand trailed a lock of hair down her shoulder.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said. She wanted to tease him about Kellin’s forgotten face, but the love in his stopped her. Guilt rolled through her. He'd go on lonely as before, unless she did something to put an end to that. He'd never know with whom he’d shared this transcendent moment. She was ashamed of fooling him and of what she was about to do, sneaking off like a coward and leaving her hologram to close out the evening.

The thought of the hologram brought her back to herself. _He thought he’d just had sex with her hologram._ The captain’s hologram! It was pornographic. Disgusting. It was all she could do not to turn on him in fury and bust him down to ensign for such behavior, but for the scandal of her own behavior. Then she remembered why she’d been so scandalized in the first place. 

What they'd just done was what she’d expected at first, a sex program. They were common enough. Although the conviction was a serious black mark on an officer’s record, the penalties were suspension of holo-privileges and therapy, nothing draconian. But the playback she’d watched had nothing to do with sex. He and holo-Janeway had done little more than talk. They’d hugged, kissed mildly, then sat on the beach and watched the sun go down as they shared the events of their respective duty shifts. They’d watched the stars come out and pointed to the constellations, resting in each other's arms, offering comfort and commiseration, then gone their separate ways. It was sweet, lovely. Why couldn’t he have asked her to share this with him?

Then she realized that of course, he had. He’d invited her on countless holodeck outings that she’d refused. He’d initiated friendly conversations, games of velocity, and dinners a hundred times more than she’d said yes. Her yeses had become a scarce thing to chase, and gradually his requests had become rarer, and this was why. He’d found not exactly a substitute - it was her after all - but another way to be with her that didn’t require any time or effort from her, because she wasn’t willing to spare him any. That was the part she wasn't willing to reveal to the admiralty. She didn't want anyone to see how petty she'd been with the man she loved. Janeway felt nauseous as she reached the cabin door.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What?” Chakotay had reassembled his uniform and reached down to grab her panties from the decking. He was staring at them as if they’d tried to bite him. His mouth fell open. Janeway realized in the instant between one blink and the next that the panties didn't belong in the scenario. She hadn't checked what undergarments he'd programmed onto holo-Janeway, but of course he would know. As much as the program obviously meant to him, he would have paid attention to every detail. She needed to do something to distract him, but he was several steps away. She couldn’t reach him in time.

“Computer,” he said. “End program.” The scenery sparkled into nothingness around them, leaving Janeway and Chakotay staring at each other surrounded by an empty hologrid. He looked from her to the panties and back up. She swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“I knew something was different,” he said, speaking like he was recovering from being stunned with a phaser. “It was nice talking to the hologram but I never….” He held up the panties, brandishing the telling clue. “I never wanted her like that. And _I never gave her flowered panties._ ”

Janeway put a hand on the wall of the holodeck for stability. In her wildest imagination she’d never conceived such an outrageous situation. For a second she considered an emergency beam-out to her quarters, where she would hide until they reached Earth. It seemed like a reasonable alternative to continuing this conversation. 

“I never expected you to see them,” she said weakly.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why did you come here? How did you know? Why did you - ” He waved vaguely at the space between them, at a loss for words to speak of what they’d just done. He looked like he was about to lose his balance and collapse. But this was better than what was coming. When he recovered a little more he’d be outraged, she was sure of it. 

She would be, if she were him. She needed to say something, fast.

“I stumbled across the program while I was restoring the holodeck programming. I shouldn’t have looked at it. I wouldn’t have, but then I saw Lake George. And then myself. And then I did something I really shouldn’t have and played back the most recent run.”

“You saw that?” He rubbed his neck and stared at the deck.

She nodded. “I’m sorry I made you feel that was the only way you could spend time with me. You shouldn’t have used my hologram, but - ”

“There’s no but. It was wrong. I knew it was wrong. I didn’t care. Write me up, demote me, whatever you need to do. I just need to know one thing.” He looked at her again, full of pain.

“What’s that?”

“Did this mean anything, or were you just … toying with me?” His face contorted. The anger wouldn’t be long coming now. She had little time.

“The incident with Kellin unsettled me. Then I found this and - I felt like we were losing each other in a way that would be impossible to undo before long. I couldn’t bear it, Chakotay. You’re far more than a first officer to me. So I did something foolish. I came here and took the place of my hologram. I don’t know what I thought would happen. Definitely not ... that. Can you forgive me?”

He shook his head. Her heart caught in her throat at the possibility, unimaginable until now, that she could do something that would truly alienate him.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “The panties only confirmed what I already knew when you put your arms around my neck.”

Her eyebrows rose with the question.

A slight, knowing smile played on his face. “Holograms don’t have fast heart rates. Even if they have simulated pulses, they stay pretty cool. The Doctor told me about it. Yours was racing. I told myself I must be imagining things, or it was my own heartbeat I was feeling.”

He'd known. On some level he'd known all along, from the first time he'd put his arms around "holo" Janeway. In her mind Janeway replayed the words they'd spoken, with new and weighted meaning. Something joyful and hopeful rose up in her. Whatever was between them wasn't over, wasn't ruined. Not yet, anyway. She still had a shot at redemption. He was watching her with a curious gaze, trying to decide what all this meant. For a few more seconds, she could make things right, or she could let it all wash away and resign herself to decades of loneliness while Chakotay romanced the alien du jour until one day he found someone to replace her.

Janeway blew out the breath she'd been holding, tossed her head back, and took a swaying, sultry step toward him.“Are you sure you’re not just trying to get out of trouble for fucking my hologram?”

His grin lit up the grid. 

END


End file.
